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[ by Charles Cameron — eccentric cleanliness and uncleanness, and a righteous blast of Handel ]
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I ran across two quotes the other day that made me decided to start a collection of what I’ll call “Quotes from Outer Orbits”. Here are the first two:

My first pick comes from the label of one of Dr Bronner’s Magical Soaps:

Replace half-true Socialist-fluoride poison & tax-slavery with full-truth, work-speech-press & profitsharing Socialaction! All-One! So, help build 4 billion Hannibal wind-power plants, charging 96 billion battery-banks, powering every car-factory-farm-home-monorail & pump, watering Babylon-roof-gardens & 800 billion Israel-Milorganite fruit trees, guarded by Swiss 6000 year Universal Military Training

My second is a lot fiercer, but no less strange — it’s from radio host Pete Santilli, speaking on air:

I want to shoot her right in the vagina and I don’t want her to die right away; I want her to feel the pain and I want to look her in the eyes and I want to say, on behalf of all Americans that you’ve killed, on behalf of the Navy SEALS, the families of Navy SEAL Team Six who were involved in the fake hunt down of this Obama, Obama bin Laden thing, that whole fake scenario, because these Navy SEALS know the truth, they killed them all. On behalf of all of those people, I’m supporting our troops by saying we need to try, convict, and shoot Hillary Clinton in the vagina.

I’ll take the literal soap box over the metaphorical one, thanks!

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But I don’t mean to leave you depressed at the state of the world. Meanwhile the Ensemble Zaïs, led by Benoît Babel, plays one of Handel‘s Organ Concerti with a vitality that inspires me…

Who can despair at this?

[ by Charles Cameron — two more short videos in my series of Sunday Suprises, aiming for unexpected delight & continuing Brit-USian amity ]
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Here in a nutshell is a glimpse of why I admire and like HRH:

And I’ve chosen this example of Leonard Cohen, not for the line “where the light gets in” which has been quoted too often for its own good, but for “the holy dove, she will be caught again”.

There’s so much more in this song to learn, to take in, to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” as the prayer book says.

Hoping you’ll take some pleasure in one or both of these clips this Sunday!

[ by Charles Cameron — problem & solution? comedy & tragedy? cause and effect? I do love me a little Dylan ]
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The logical order for these two clips would be the one in the title, but here I’m going to give you the Fix first, and leave you afterwards with the Broken — by all means tell me if I’m wrong:

How successful d’you think that strategy will prove in the world we now live in?

People are talking about Dylan getting the Nobel again. But what does that mean? Everything is broken?

[ by Charles Cameron — religious law enforcement, therapy incarcerated, and a quick blast of Johnny Cash ]
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As you know, I collect instances of various patterns I see recurring in my twitterstream and elsewhere — here, I’d like to introduce a new pattern that I’ll simply call “simple incongruities”.

My first example, which I ran across several days ago, was this one from Saudi Arabia:

Apparently, "religious police chase" is a thing in Saudi Arabia. http://t.co/96cW0AnqDZ

— Tim Mathews (@timmathews) September 24, 2013

From the [Lebanese] Daily Star news report:

A Saudi motorist died and a passenger was injured on Tuesday when a religious police vehicle crashed into their car during a hot pursuit in Riyadh, a newspaper reported. A patrol of the notorious police, known unofficially as Mutawaa, chased two young men travelling in a sedan before crashing into their vehicle, forcing it off an overpass and onto a lower-level road, Al-Hayat daily said. The patrol vehicle fled the scene instantly, the daily said. “We pray to Allah to forgive the dead,” said Mohammed al-Shraimi, assistant spokesman of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the official name of the Mutawaa.

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It’s my second example — from nearer home — which I only ran across today that inspired me to make a separate post about these incongruities. The image of caged prisoners in a group therapy session at San Quentin (see above) was just too remarkable for me to pass over. The tweet that brought it to my attention is below:

Astonishing picture of a group therapy session in a California prison; http://t.co/pirlQYqHG4

— Olivia Solon (@olivia_solon) September 25, 2013

Here’s a comment from Johnny Cash — to give you added San Quentin context:

[ by Charles Cameron — time for some more surprises, this time in stone and jazz — plus an afterimage of WWI ]
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First, a master-class in the craft of the blues:

Second, the moon:

And third, because of the violence in Kenya, Pakistan, Syria … get me a globe and I’ll spin it… and because I’ve talked with you before of my friend Heathcote Williams and he mentioned this to his followers today, here are his meditations on World War I, prepared for its centenary next bloody year:

Neither he nor my father ever explained the war to me. It was just something that had happened to them. Something irrational that hung over them. A grisly cloud of spectral blood. A tumor that fogged the psyche. Something in their history that had spoiled both their lives.

And them’s the blues for this week: go well, stay well.